


Stained Kaiju Blue

by ronandhermy



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen, M/M, an au that occurs in the Pacific Rim verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:04:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1350082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronandhermy/pseuds/ronandhermy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crossover between Shameless and Pacific Rim. In which Mickey and Ian are Jager Pilots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stained Kaiju Blue

The first time Ian ever saw a Kaiju he was twelve and he was watching the news with his family. It was a giant hunk of flesh that moved with destruction and terror as its main motives. Despair and death followed in its wake as the estimates of the dead and missing were read out loud by a far too preppy news anchor.

The rest of the world was frightened of the monsters. Ian wasn’t. Not really. He’d always known monsters that wore human flesh. This time they actually looked the part.

***

Mickey is thirteen years old when he watches the Golden Gate Bridge fall and he is silent. The world is screaming, Mandy’s crying --really crying--for the first time in years, and Mickey is lost in silence. These shits from the fuck all lagoon change everything and yet nothing.

The world was always going to crap, now it’ll just get there faster.

***

Ian is fourteen when Lip is pulled out of school and into the Jager science division heading up in Alaska. They need to train up bright minds who aren’t afraid to push the frontier so that humanity has a fighting chance. Ian can see his brother is torn. He doesn’t want to leave his family, not with Frank still around and everything going to hell, but his paycheck will more than keep the family fed and safe. 

He takes the job.

Ian cries once and then refuses to do so again.

***

Mickey is fifteen and learning how to process and sell black market Kaiju parts. _It’s like a car Mickey,_ Iggy tells him as they pull the flesh from half a crushed bone _strip it for parts and sell the most valuable to the highest bidder._ And it was easier to think of it as just another product and not the thing bent on killing them all.

He does hate the blue Kaiju blood though. It smells and stains and leaves lingering lines of light beneath his eyelids when he tries to sleep.

Sometimes he thinks it’s funny in that South Side it’s-not-funny-at-all type of way that his fingertips are forever stained by the blue blood of sea monsters. It used to be his favorite color.

***

Ian has just turned sixteen and Mickey is seventeen when they are selected for the Jager pilot program. The government is desperate to find people who are drift compatible, considering people keep dying of inconvenient things like brain cancer and Kaiju attacks and Jagers don’t pilot themselves.

Mickey didn’t even realize he was being tested until after the fight. Ian practically volunteered. 

Ian wanted to be a hero. Wanted to save the world and protect his family and provide for them. He was going to make them proud.

Mickey just wanted to get out Chicago before he died.

***

They fuck long before they drift. It wouldn’t have happened, shouldn’t have happened, except they got into a fight. One that wasn’t about training but was just two South Side boys with secrets and too much shit on their plates finding the one outlet they knew: violence.

It was all fists and fury and then it was something more. It was tearing off clothes and finding a rhythm and feeling more connected than they’d ever been. It was flesh and passion and stripping away all of the past shit that seemed to hang around. They were just them. Just Ian. Just Mickey. And this was just about them. No one else.

They didn’t really talk about what happened. Not really. 

But that didn’t stop if from happening again and again and again.

***

Lip does not like Mickey. He hasn’t liked him since Mickey gave Lip a swirly in fifth grade. Old grudges die hard.

But what he hates the most about the shortest Milkovich is that he’s drift compatible with Ian.

Lip is not.

And because of the one time his brain failed him, in this most important thing, he cannot protect his brother. Instead, he has to trust Mickey Milkovich to do it.

And he hates that thought more than a Level Five Kaiju attack.

***

Mickey doesn’t call home except for once a month to talk with his sister Mandy. When one of the guys on the base had seen her picture word quickly spread around that Mickey had a hot younger sister. He’d gotten into a few fights defending his sister's tarnish honor already. Mandy wasn’t even here and she was causing him trouble.

Ian, on the other hand, always seemed to be talking to one sibling or the other. Fiona was always worried. _Was he eating enough? What were they feeding him? Was he getting along with his roommate? No starting fights unless it’s a Kaiju._ And Ian would be off blabbing away with those brotherly sighs and laughs.

He talked to Carl about staying in school now that he was in the advanced demolitions track and if he was keeping his siblings safe. He talked to Debbie about her extra medical training she was getting in the accelerated nursing program after she finished her regular school day. But he also asked about boys and if there were any new ones he needed to threaten. He talked to Liam too. Silly stories and reminders that his big brother loved him and that’s why he couldn’t be home right now.

Mickey would never admit it but he liked to listen to Ian talking to the other Gallaghers. It was nice to be reminded that there were actually people out there who gave a shit about each other. Made him feel like just a bit of a hero to be protecting those people who managed to make Ian smile like the Fourth of July. Like he belonged in one of those old comics he’d stolen from Tony and pretended to read while he listened in on Ian’s conversations. 

For a moment they could pretend they were normal. Like they were kids at a boarding school or some shit who were just enjoying the weekend before class started. They could ignore for a moment that they were Jager Pilot Cadets and they were training to die. 

Pilots didn’t have a long life expectancy after all.

***

The first time they drifted they were up against a Level One Kaiju attack. They weren’t actually supposed to be the ones going but Tribolski had attempted suicide a few days ago so him and his partner, a spunky gal called Sasha, were out. Ian and Mickey were the next best trained on the list even though they still had five months to go at least. But there was no one else so they went.

No time like the present to learn.

They didn’t chase the RABIT which surprised both of them. They did chase the Kaiju and crush what passed for a throat until it would never move again. The whole fight lasted fifteen minutes and then it was over in a splash of blue and an unearthly silence.

Just fifteen minutes. 

But they had sunk into each others minds. Each others memories. Each others souls. 

And they found it hard to breath when they disengaged the neural handshake.

***

They slept in the same bed that night, clinging to each other as they pretended they weren’t doing so. Pretended they weren’t trying to sink back into each others very being. Ian could very well see how being so immersed in another person could be dangerous. It was addictive. To see yourself as they saw you. To trust another to that extent. It could very well become an addiction.

And Mickey, well, he was already an addict.

***

They’re one of the best teams the Ranger program has. It’s a surprise to many but as long as they keep the Kaiju away they could come from the moon and people wouldn’t really care. 

They refuse to do the talk shows though. They don’t want the press tour or the spotlight. They have a job and they’re paid to do it. Ian’s here for his family and Mickey’s here for the paycheck. They do not feel that they are noble in their reasons for risking their lives for humanity.

They also refuse to have separate rooms although they’re now entitled as official pilots. They’d refuse separate beds if they weren’t sure of the red flags that would raise. But they don’t sleep apart anymore. They don’t even try to pretend like Mickey’s going to sleep in the other bed. 

They are together. 

In heart. In mind. In soul. In every way that matters and they both know it. The rest of the world can fuck off. They’ve got bigger problems to deal with.

***

They don’t actually name their Jager. Mickey sometimes calls it The Beast with a strange affection, but Ian figures its just because the damn thing’s got rocket launchers.

Ian doesn’t really call it anything, not even to himself. It’s just _ours._

***

Ian is nineteen and Mickey is twenty and they are in way over their heads. This Kaiju is a Level Three and it brought friends. 

They’re trying to hold their own. God knows they’re trying. But it’s been over a half hour and the only thing keeping them going is South Side pride and an anger that comes from not wanting to die. Not today Kaiju fucker, not today. We’ll live to see our next birthdays but not you.

It takes another twenty minutes for back-up to arrive but at that point it’s too late. 

They managed to take down the Level Three but their holding pit was slashed open and something happened with the circuitry. Their vital signs are all over the place back at HQ and the medical team is on stand-by for when they arrive.

Seeing those boys, both unconscious and so broken, carried in on stretchers made the Marshal wonder if they were just winning battles, only to lose the war.

***

Ian’s leg is shot to hell. The nerves are never going to be the same again. He’ll always walk with a limp and he’ll never be able to pilot again. He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until the nurse asks him if he’d like a tissue.

After the news about his no longer existent career, the burns were a cake walk. His left arm and hand were covered in ugly stripes of newly grafted skin and he was thankful for the bandages that hide them from view.

He wasn’t yet brave enough to face his scars.

***

Mickey was in a coma for three days before coming to. He has some minor memory loss, mostly childhood things that he probably didn’t care to remember anyway, but nothing as major as they had feared when he’d been wheeled in with a nose that wouldn’t stop bleeding. He occasionally lost motor control of his right hand, short spasms that he couldn’t control, but they only happened once in awhile.

His right side of his body is badly burned, his burns far worse than Ian's. They kept him half-sedated for nearly a week and a half while they tried to bring his pain to a manageable level while he was healing. 

At least they put him in a room with Ian.

Probably wanted to keep the two crippled ex-pilots away from the rest of the base. Away from the healthy fighters who could see their own mortality reflected in Ian’s nerve damaged leg, in Mickey’s burns. 

They could go fuck themselves as far as the South Side was concerned. 

***

Lip visits regularly, bringing updates from home. Half the time he’s there Mickey is in a medically induced sleep while Ian anxiously watches the monitors like they can predict the future.

Lip’s a smart kid, always has been, and he doesn’t miss the fact that the two boys have managed to convince the nursing staff to push their beds as close together as possible. Sometimes he’s arrived early and seen the boys holding hands. Sometimes they’re talking but most of the time it looks like they’re communicating without words. Just holding on to each and making sure the other one is still there.

Lip has to admit he’s envious of the bond these two share. The neurolink is the deepest bond another person can undertake with another. There is nothing like it. Lip should know, he helped invent it. 

But he admits sometimes, to himself when he’s all alone, that he gladly trade all of his inventions to be the one lying in Mickey’s bed, holding his brother’s hand.

***

They heal, slowly but surely they heal. It’s ironic that they keep getting better, keep getting stronger, when the rest of the world is falling apart. Just goes to show that the South Side will still be standing long after the rest of the world turns to rubble.

***

Mickey is twenty-two and sleeping with his head pillowed on Ian’s chest. His Kaiju blue stained fingertips stand out against the pale freckled skin that belongs to the younger man. He dreams of memories that do not belong to him. Of Fiona’s birthday party and Liam’s birth. Things he should have no knowledge of except for the fact that he literally knows everything about Ian’s life. Has seen it in the Drift. 

Ian is in that slow haze of waking where he’s not actually aware that he’s waking up yet. His arms are firmly locked into place around Mickey, keeping the dark haired boy right where he is. Ian doesn’t like it when Mickey gets out of bed before him, or without waking him. It causes to him have panic attacks because he thinks he just dreamed that Mickey survived. 

For now they are at peace. One of the largest battles of the world is taking place across the ocean but they continue to dream. If the program needs them they know where to look: in a shitty tenement apartment in the outskirts of Chicago with seven different locks and neighbors that no one fucks with. 

But the program won’t need them. They’re too broken and used up for it now.

They did their best, it’s someone else's turn.

***

Earth Wins. Or so the news stations and newspapers proclaim as Ian makes some eggs the next morning while Mickey brews the coffee. They are quiet as they go about their morning, listening to the finale victory speech and memorials and recounts of the past several years of war.

They say nothing as they eat their eggs and drink their coffee. There’s not much to say at this point that hasn’t been spouted ten different ways by famous people and civilians alike.

But then Lip’s on the screen, he’s one of the main scientists for the Jager program after all, and it’s obvious he’s been crying. Because while everyone is cheering victory, Lip is remembering. And when the microphone is thrust into his face by a chipper news reporter he raises his solemn eyes to look directly into the camera and says, “People cheer on victory but most of them do not know the cost, the real cost of such a victory. I just want to remember those who sacrificed their lives, their futures, their limbs to ensure that we would win. They are the ones you should be talking to. Not me.”

And just like that it seems the news reporter suddenly remembers that Dr. Gallagher had a younger brother who was a Jager Pilot but wasn’t anymore. 

They turn the television off and they’re silent for a moment before they burst into laughter. And they just can’t stop laughing. It’s an opened and whole sound that fills up the entire one bedroom apartment. 

Everyone’s talking about how shit is going to go back to normal now.

Mickey is pretty sure he and Ian forgot what normal was a long long time ago.

***

They’re invited to parades and speeches and they turn down everyone. They are not some tourist attraction in a zoo. If you wanted to see the scars you had to earn the right by being an actual human being about it and not some gawker. 

They do go down to the Alibi for a victory drink. It’s strange to be back in that old pub room with most of the same people still hanging on and still existing in this strange suspended reality. They are welcomed back with cheers and rounds of beers but they are treated as people. As South Side shits who came back from war and have the scars to prove it. They are only real heroes if they buy the next round.

Everyone who can be there is there. But as Ian glances from the blue stained fingertips to the blue eyes of the man he’s been in love with since he was sixteen and didn’t really know what that word meant _(now he knows it means Mickey)_ he can’t help but feel like they’ve finally made it.

They’re home.

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my first attempts at a crossover, please be kind.


End file.
